Managing Consent in the Data Management Process

Transcription

1 Application Overview Managing in the Data Management Process

2 Executive Overview To grow market share and maintain customers for life, the value of creating and delivering effective communications cannot be overemphasized. Depending upon your industry, many of these communications contain time-critical and sensitive personal information. Your company is under increasing scrutiny to ensure that this information be protected either due to your own business practices and/or to adhere to applicable privacy regulations regarding obtaining consent to update customer information. How do you build an automated consent process into your existing data management and document production processes? This paper will discuss this capability at length. The Challenge Many companies receive address updates through customer calls and Move Update methods. However, for a growing number of industries, written consent must come from the customer before a company can update their data. This requirement has special relevance for the insurance, healthcare and financial industries due to risk of fraud and privacy concerns, as well as for government agencies due to security issues. Gaining consent may add another step to the process, but not doing so could be even more costly consider the direct costs associated with lost postal discounts, r ing costs and increased customer service costs associated with undeliverable mail pieces. Balancing customers privacy and effective communications may require your company to reconsider: How mailing decisions can be made on a piece-by-piece basis that maximize customer privacy and improve delivery of time critical information How to minimize print and mail costs How to implement a defined and auditable process that s compliant with governing regulatory agencies How all of the above can be achieved without incurring large costs to redesign internal processes Solution Overview Group 1 Software has developed a Application that combines a variety of technologies to offer an automated and compliant update of customer information within a high-volume production environment. The four steps of this application process are: Data extraction and enrichment Enhanced document production (when consent is not required) Enhanced document production (when consent is required) Customer delivery and consent update The Application is one of the many solutions in the Customer Communication Management (CCM) portfolio designed to meet the initial and ongoing needs for improving customer communications. 2

3 Name, address Validated name/address, exceptions Application Overview The below diagram shows the functional flow of the Application. updates Customer Delivery and Update Automated update methods CASS cleansing (CODE-1 Plus, Finalist ) Move Update (VeriMove ) Enhanced Document Production () Exception file requiring customer service contact Presort (MailStream Plus ) Cleansed address file/exceptions Sorted files Required Address extraction Name/Address Data Required? Y/N Existing Business Applications Data Extraction and Enrichment No Required HIGH SPEED PRODUCTION Printing Inserters Document Released to Production (No ) Data Extraction and Enrichment The first step of the Application involves referencing either the document production print file (such as AFP or Metacode) or an external data file to extract name and address information. External files can also be used to make logic decisions based on defined business rules. For example, customers who call in to the call center to indicate they have a change of address may still require written consent. This information may be more current than the information on the customer documents. The application can check this list while processing to ensure the most current information is being used to process customer documents and/or to trigger a consent notification. The extracted customer contact information passes through a variety of address quality steps such as CODE-1 Plus and Finalist, USPS CASS Certified TM solutions, to ensure the highest deliverability as well as qualify the mailing for postal discounts. 3

4 Customer records that have been processed by CASS Certified software can fall into three categories: 1. The address is standardized and good the address passes to the next step in the process. 2. The address is fixed. Depending on business rules and the nature of the correction these records may be handled as requiring consent and flagged. For example, addresses that have a missing ZIP may not be flagged for consent, but addresses and ZIP codes with the wrong state are flagged. Note that these rules can be adjusted and applied based on CASS TM return codes and on a document type basis. 3. The address is incorrect and cannot be fixed. These exceptions can be written to a text file and passed for company disposition. In many cases, these files can be matched with phone contact information and passed to the call center to attempt to contact the customer for a valid address. Exception addresses can also be run through a second application such as FineTune Data TM or GeoStan TM to append/augment the address information. Generally these second processes provide a percent lift over the initial coding percentages. These fixed addresses could be flagged for consent or other special treatment for example, in a situation whereby the customer is believed to be deceased. Now all customer records with valid addresses are passed to VeriMove TM, which matches the customer name and address against the USPS NCOA LinkTM database. This process yields three types of results: Move Update (VeriMove ) CASS cleansing (CODE-1 Plus, Finalist ) Pass Extracted Name and Address File Fail Exception Processing FineTune Data TM Unresolved Addresses Fixed Addresses GeoStan TM 4

5 Application Overview 1. No move found name and address are good process document as is. 2. Move found new address available. Generally these require consent and are flagged. 3. Either new address not available or can t find definite change. Note that these rules can be adjusted and applied based on VeriMove return codes and on a document type basis. Enhanced Document Production: No Upon return of successfully validated addresses not requiring consent, StreamWeaver returns the addresses to the document files and can also: Apply 4-State and/or 2D barcodes for enhanced tracking and delivery StreamWeaver can also perform a variety of other enhancements prior to printing, such as: Re-formatting of documents adding logos and pie charts, changing remittance PO boxes, etc. Consolidating documents going to the same household Producing barcodes for intelligent inserters Sorting, sequencing and packaging to optimize printing, inserter operation, postage and ad banners Other business rules processing, statistics collections and reporting, such as generating a check ledger if printing checks Apply POSTNET TM barcodes based on ZIP + 4 information for better delivery and tracking in the USPS Enhanced Documents No Required HIGH SPEED PRODUCTION Printing Inserters Document Released to Production 5

6 Move Update (VeriMove ) Move found (requires consent) Enhanced Document Production () Exception file requiring customer service contact Required HIGH SPEED PRODUCTION Printing Inserters Enhanced Document Production: StreamWeaver executes business rules during production based on your company s consent policy. Customer documents requiring consent can be processed in a variety of ways, including: Generating a file and sending to the center to contact customers for recorded verbal consent. This may be especially appropriate if the change of address also redefines the customer service, such as a change in state of residence, insurability or other requirements. At that point, the call center can verify the new address and update the service offering as required. Generating a specialized mail piece, such as a postcard or signature letter, with the new address and/or old address and sending to the customer requesting their written consent. The creation of a tracking number or encrypted barcode to collect consent responses. Sending or withholding a customer document (i.e. check, financial statement or Explanation of Benefits) pending customer response. 6

7 Application Overview All customer document jobs are ready to be presorted by MailStream Plus, Group 1 Software s PAVE TM certified presort application or other presort software to attain the highest postal discounts possible. These may range between 2 to 9.5 cents per mail piece. Finally, StreamWeaver documents and optimizes the job to maximize efficiency of printing and inserter hardware, and the mail pieces are generated and sent. All customer documents and responses are indexed and archived for easy referencing and retrieval for customer service and auditing purposes within the e2 TM Vault, Group 1 s high performance data and document repository. Customer Delivery and Update Customer Call Center Customers receiving consent communications can provide consent verification with their tracking number through: Web acknowledgement Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system (1-800 #) Returning an executed consent form Customer Delivery and Update Automated update methods updates Enhanced Document Production () Exception file requiring customer service contact Required Existing Business Applications e2 TM Vault Data/Document Repository 7

8 Automated Inbound Tracking of Forms When written consent is required and the customer returns the mail piece, these documents can be read via barcode technology to trigger updating of customer information. Originals of approval letters or scanned images can be kept within the e2 Vault to meet proof of consent requirements. If the original document was withheld pending consent, the document can now be released to production. Conclusion Ensuring regulatory compliance does not require new architecture. In fact, gaining consent to update or change customer data can be achieved in your standard course of sending customized communications. With ease of implementation in mind, Group 1 Software has developed a solution that can be used on all platforms and within your existing architecture. This capability is part of the Group 1 Software Customer Communication Management portfolio of solutions. To find out more, contact Group 1 Software at About Group 1 Software Group 1 Software, Inc. a wholly owned subsidiary of Pitney Bowes, develops software that provides a comprehensive Customer Communication Management (CCM) solution, which helps maximize the value of customer data and improves the efficiency and effectiveness of customer communications. Group 1 Software s solutions are an essential component of enterprise applications, serving to consolidate, cleanse and enrich corporate data, and generate personalized business documents for multi-channel delivery, customer care and efficient business processing. The company s solutions are utilized by over 3,500 organizations worldwide in the utilities, financial services/banking, GIS/mapping, retail, telecommunications, insurance and other industries, including Entergy, L.L. Bean, Microsoft, QVC, Siemens, Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo. Group 1 Software 4200 Parliament Place Suite 600 Lanham, MD For more information about our products and services, please log onto our web site: For more information about Pitney Bowes, visit Group 1 is a registered trademark of Group 1 Software, Inc. Group 1 Software ia a non-exclusive Interface Distributor Licensee of the United States Postal Service. The following trademarks are owned by the United States Postal Service : USPS, CASS Certified, ZIP, POSTNET, CASS, NCOA Link, ZIP + 4 and PAVE. AD#7.06 Pitney Bowes is a registered trademark and the Pitney Bowes Process Bar Design is a trademark of Pitney Bowes Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies Group 1 Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved An Equal Opportunity Employer. Printed in U.S.A. WPP1006/0506G1